rbmk intro - Quick Start Guide

Overview

RBMK is designed for composable network measurements. The two core commands are dig for DNS queries and curl for HTTP(S) requests. You can combine these to perform step-by-step measurements.

Basic Examples

DNS resolution

Get IP address for a domain

$ rbmk dig +short=ip example.com | rbmk head -n1
93.184.215.14

HTTP Measurements

Fetch a webpage:

$ rbmk curl https://example.com/

Using Specific IP address

Fetch webpage using a specific IP address:

$ rbmk curl --resolve example.com:443:93.184.215.14 https://example.com/

Note that rbmk curl ignores the port passed to --resolve and uses the given address for all ports of the given domain.

Combining Commands

Separate DNS and HTTP measurements:

addr=$(rbmk dig +short=ip example.com | rbmk head -n1)
rbmk curl --resolve example.com:443:$addr https://example.com/

Or, to measure all the available IP addresses:

for addr in $(rbmk dig +short=ip example.com); do
    rbmk curl --resolve example.com:443:$addr https://example.com/
done

Collecting Structured Logs

Save measurement logs:

$ rbmk dig --logs dns.jsonl example.com
$ rbmk curl --logs http.jsonl https://example.com/

Use --logs - to emit the logs to the standard output.

Benefits

This modular approach helps isolate different aspects of network measurements and makes it easier to understand where issues occur.

Next Steps

• Run rbmk dig --help for detailed DNS measurement options

• Run rbmk curl --help for detailed HTTP measurement options

• Try rbmk tutorial for a comprehensive guide

History

The rbmk intro command was introduced in RBMK v0.1.0.